Zodiac is a French-made game with a Japanese soul. The influence is clear in everything from the art style to the gameplay. Kobojo CEO Mario Rizzo, the studio behind the upcoming mobile title, describes it as a persistent multiplayer story-driven Japanese role-playing game. It sounds ambitious as the team tries to meld Western and Eastern gaming traditions.

On one side, Rizzo says the team is striving for a game with high story content while the other end seeks to innovate with online functionality. Kobojo does this by allowing players create their main character and letting friends use that hero in their own party. Zodiac will be persistent in how a player’s hero will level up their jobs and grow more powerful as they go through the campaign and are used by friends. I had a chance to check out the project earlier this month and it looked promising.Continue Reading →

For cord-cutters, Sling TV was just the beginning. For those who rely solely Internet for their content, it offered the best of both worlds. It offered a handful of live channels and gave viewers the opportunity to enjoy live sports. It’s a smart piece of tech, which time has come.

But not to be outdone, Sony has been working on its own TV service — PlayStation Vue available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. (An iPad version is coming soon.) It works similarly to Sling TV but it’s backed with a host of extras that cord-cutters may long for. The service, which launches today in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, has more than 85 channels of live TV. But in addition to that, the TV service has a built-in DVR where users can add shows to track on their My Shows list and the programs are automatically recorded and stored in the cloud. That means viewers never have to worry about space on a hard drive. The one caveat is that they have up to 28 days to watch the recorded shows.

With Mortal Kombat X, fans of the series finally get a new chapter to the martial arts fantasy saga. After years of foundering, the 2011 reboot put the franchise back on track, retelling the plot of the first three games. The work left everyone in the community on the same page with revamped mechanics and updated visuals.

In many ways, Mortal Kombat (2011) was setting the groundwork for a larger stage with this sequel. I had a chance to check out the first chapter of the story mode recently. It begins with the revelation that Shinnok, a rogue elder god, was behind Shao Kahn’s machinations. Trapped by the other deities for trying to invade Earthrealm another time, Shinnok was plotting to escape his imprisonment in the Netherrealm via Kahn’s invasion.Continue Reading →

Since 2008, React! Games has been quietly making titles for smartphones. The small team based out of Salt Lake City has developed scores of projects across iOS, Android and other platforms. The developer has been slowly building a war chest, and this year, they’re taking a stab at console development. The team’s first effort is a roguelike dungeon crawler called Super Dungeon Bros.

At first glance, it looks like a cross between Castle Crashers and Diablo. Four people can tackle the campaign via couch co-op or through the Internet as they each control four knights — Axl, Freddie, Lars and Ozzie. (I sense a rock ‘n’ roll theme here.) Each hero has his own personality and that comes through in the banter system that React! Games developed. Pressing on the D-pad signals a response like “Good Job!” and other players can respond to that statement with their own D-pad gesture. It’s a mechanic that could prove useful especially if you’re someone who likes to game with the mic off. (Sorry, there are too many loudmouths out there.)

As far as gameplay goes, the isometric perspective gives the procedurally generated levels a look that resembles Blizzard’s hack-and-slash lootfest with a few major difference. One of them is the inclusion of simple puzzles. For example, a four-person crew come across a gap. One person will have to get thrown across so the hero can lower bridges for the rest of the team. The squads can also pick each other up and stand on each other’s shoulders, otherwise known as a Bro Stack, to reach higher areas. Super Dungeon Bros. is filled with those type of combo moves.Continue Reading →

More than a year after essentially getting a redo, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is set to launch its first major expansion. Coming June 23, the content explores the bloody thousand-year conflict between Ishgard and Dravania. The expansion will boast massive new areas and new job-specific armor. That’s on top of a new end-game raid dungeon that fans of the series will recognize: Alexander. The creature is usually a summon but in the massively multiplayer online game, it will be stage that fans explore piece by piece.

That’s a ton of fresh content but the more fascinating features were the new flying mounts, new race (the Aur Ra) and the new jobs (Dark Knight, Astrologian and Machinist). Let’s take a look at these three new additions, starting with the new dragonlike species called the Aur Ra. The group ties in nicely with the expansion’s focus, which features armored dragoons who battle flying dragons. Director Naoki Yoshida said the team looked at what characteristics were missing from the roster and found that there was a need for another demihuman-type race. The group features big burly males with horns around their faces and more diminutive and lithe females. There are scales covering parts of their skin and they have tails. They remind me of Dragon Age’s Qunari at times.

Those who want to try out the new race can do so even if they have a character they’ve been working on for months. Certain editions of the game will include a Fantasia potion that will let players change the race of an already established character.

HAL Laboratory knows how to make compelling characters from simple shapes. Take Kirby for example. He’s essentially a pink circle with eyes. The unique hero also has the special ability to adopt traits of creatures it swallows. He has starred in dozens of games. That’s a lot of work for a character that was initially designed as placeholder.

For its latest protagonist, HAL Laboratory was aiming for something with an edge, and it found one with Qbby, which is a square. The hero stars in Boxboy!, a short and simple puzzle game headed to Nintendo’s eShop. As Qbby, players have to get from point A to point B, but there are obstacles in the way.Continue Reading →

Raptr revamped its mission last year, going from a service that tracked how gamers played across platform to a company that focused on improving the lives of PC gamers. It did this in two ways: The first was focused on sharing experiences. The Raptr program let gamers easily stream or capture clips with minimal impact to the CPU or graphics card. The second was that the service culled its database of systems and optimized games for the hardware players have.

It’s an idea that’s similar to Nvidia’s GeForce Experience but Raptr has an edge because it’s hardware agnostic. It works for almost any computer system, and it has a partnership with AMD. Now, Raptr is expanding its support via a collaboration with Intel.

“If you recall, our mission at Raptr, is to unlock the full gaming potential of your PC,” said Dennis Fong, Ratpr CEO. “Much like what we’re doing with AMD, we’re bringing our partnership with Intel to do the same thing.”

That means the same sort of optimization available to AMD users is expanded to Intel’s massive install base. With nearly the chipmaker controlling 85 percent of the microprocessor market, that means Raptr can cover virtually any PC. Fong said that computers that would get the most help from Raptr support are low- and mid-end PCs. The service could modify the setting on the systems so players can get a better experience.

“A lot of these guys don’t know they can be playing some of the most popular games,” Fong said. “It brings hundreds of millions of gamers into the PC world.”

Raptr’s partnership with Intel also gives the service access to the chipmakers’ large database, so that it can better tweak a game’s settings. In addition, Raptr will also be integrated into Intel’s Quick Sync technology and it will help update drivers for the company’s chips. That means recording gameplay on PC will have even less of an impact on a rig’s performance.

For The Order: 1886, perhaps less is more. The action title from Ready at Dawn was announced in 2013, and since then, we’ve had snippets of information about the game here and there. The most I know is this: It takes place in an alternate Victorian era universe, where men still get around by carriage, wear top hots and sport bushy mustaches. They’re battling all sorts of supernatural creatures with the most obvious being werewolves. Other than that it’s hard to pinpoint what the game exactly is.

I got a clearer sense recently when I had a chance to play a short demo and talk with the game’s director Dana Jan. I’ve liked the team’s work since God of War: Chains of Olympus. The studio has a way of telling personal stories that are set amid epic backdrops. They even managed to make Kratos more human instead of the unrelenting rage monster that he evolved into. It’s a talent that few teams have: Ready at Dawn has a deft way of merging gameplay with storytelling and give players other emotions in genres that are usually focused power fantasies.Continue Reading →

With the toys-to-life genre, the model has usually been one way. If you look at Skylanders orDisney Infinity, players have figurines and they put them on a reader of some sort and that instantly transports a version of that character inside a video game. There’s not much interaction with the toy other than having it on your desk. There’s no point pretending the figurine is real because that’s what happens in the designated game.

But Anki Drive is coming at the toys-to-life genre from another direction. The company has built a toy car that reads a specially marked roadway. The battery-powered vehicles propel themselves along the track and players control them via smartphone. Think of it as a racing game like Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off-Road Racing that ubiquitous arcade racer, but instead of images on the screen, you’ll be controlling real-life vehicles in front of you albeit smaller ones.

Anki’s first effort proved to be popular. It was the No. 2 best-selling toy on Amazon during the holidays. But the ruglike track was limiting. There was only one course, and after a few races, you’d want something more. That’s where Anki Overdrive comes in. The follow-up to Anki’s first product turns its attention from cars to tracks as the company introduces modular courses. It’s similar to the plastic track pieces you bought for your Hot Wheels except these course pieces are wider and carry cars that do more impressive things.Continue Reading →

When Kingston Technology launched its own gaming-focused line of products, the highlight of the bunch was the HyperX Cloud. It was by far the most comfortable set of cans and boasted great sound quality to boot. For an encore, the Fountain Valley-based company created the similar-looking HyperX Cloud II.

On the surface, there may not appear to be much difference but there’s more tech lurking beneath and beyond the earcups of the HyperX Cloud II. They both feature 53mm drivers, which produce crisp, clean sound, and have the memory foam cushions, which deadened outside noise. But what separates the 2015 model from last year’s is that it now supports virtual 7.1 surround sound thanks to audio control box that connects to a USB port on the PC. Additionally, the HyperX Cloud II also has a single 3.5mm stereo jack. The previous model had an awkward dongle that converted separate audio and microphone channels into one plug.Continue Reading →